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" We don't know why, but pancreatic cancer has a very interesting physiological link to depression. There seems to be a deep link, and we don't know what it is. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Know
Why
Deep
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" A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weal test. Normals teach us rules; outliers teach us laws. For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias. "
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" I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read. "
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" Robert Sandler is a child who died when he was three years old, and he is a child who was the first child that we know of to be treated with chemotherapy. "
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" I once set myself a deadline: half a chapter a week, 20 minutes a day. The thought froze me instantly, like literary Botox. I returned to my non-schedule: sleeping, writing 20 minutes, and then back to sleep. Breakfast in bed, with juice congealing on the sill: pages and pages began to pour out again. "
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" Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'. "
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" I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness. "
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" There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Sense
Normal
Cold
" In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and what have you. But a positive mental attitude does not cure cancer - any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer. "
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You
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" Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is an age-related disease. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person's life that is so hyper-acute, and not just because they're medically ill. It's also a moment of hope and expectation and concern. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Over
Rarely
Self-Doubt
" Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a highly incurable disease, whereas some leukemia forms are very curable. There is a big difference between one form and another. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cancer
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Difference
" There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Things
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Trend
" I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of confabulation spun by a man with severe lung disease who was prescribed 'home oxygen', but gave a false address out of embarrassment because he had no 'home.' "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Disease
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Way
" Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Prepared
Mind
You
" My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship with Bengali literature, particularly Tagore, and my interest besides reading then was music. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Memory
Relationship
Reading
" I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a doctor, grieving is a natural part of medicine. If you deny that, again, you'd get into this trap of curing and victory. I think grief is very important. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Medicine
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" What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate their homes. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma, having undergone two remissions and a relapse, asked me to describe what she was battling. By the time I had finished answering her, I realised that I had written 600 pages. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
She
Woman
Why
" The trick to my writing, it turned out, was doing so exclusively in bed. The minute I even dared to discipline myself and write at the desk, I produced mounds of nonsense. Yet, sitting in bed, I wrote easily, effortlessly, fluidly. I became the master of perfect indiscipline. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Myself
Discipline
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" Because I work on leukemia, the image of cancer I carry in my mind is that of blood. I imagine that doctors who work on breast cancer or pancreatic cancer have very different visualizations. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Blood
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Cancer
" Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Blood
Genes
Cells
" I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many different things into one big category. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Stress
Kind
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" When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Hope
Yourself
You
" Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Searching
Serendipity
Today
" Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary principles are very complicated and often its capacity to be constantly mystifying comes as a big challenge. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" If something is good, more is not necessarily better. Not always. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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" We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Project, you know, runs about $5 billion a year. That's a large amount of money, but let's not be grandiose about the amount of money we're actually spending on a problem that is attacking us at the most fundamental level of the human species. "
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" I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I Believe
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India